Author’s Note: This entry was actually written back in March just after we found out that Yolanda was pregnant; there was so much fear and hand-wringing on our part going on, I needed to write down the things that were going through my head at the time, and a blog entry seemed appropriate. Of course, part of that problem was that we hadn’t yet told anyone about the pregnancy, so I had to keep it unpublished. That’s no longer an issue, so here it is.

We found out yesterday that what we had suspected for some time was reality and as far as we know so far, you exist and are off and running down the long and busy road to being constructed inside your mummy. This is going to be a time of a lot of apprehension and waiting, I have a feeling.

You see, we’re more reserved this time, as we don’t know if we’re supposed to be excited or not yet. The last time we tried this, we had one or two other children started and something went wrong — horribly wrong — and they didn’t make it very far. While reserved, we had already gotten our hopes up and started down the path of being excited, only to spend several days and weeks in pain and heartache over it not sticking.

The other problem right now surrounds the fact that we’re still in your mummy’s homeland of Australia and, while we could get this checked out, getting something medically examined here that isn’t an emergency isn’t all that easy, and calls to get a blood test have been returned rather rudely. We’re hoping that Auntie Mel can do some good for us once we get to Adelaide and at least get an HCG level, so we can tell if you’re doing well or not.

This was supposed to be technically held off until we got back to the States, but as things go, it didn’t happen that way. I think the nice holiday finally let us relax and unwind and let our stomachs stop cramping about life for a few minutes. We really needed the break. Perhaps in some ways, it’s appropriate for you to be conceived on Australian soil, as you’re half of this land anyway.

Now, while we finish off the rest of our holiday, we’re starting to form plans in our minds — what car seat to get, what stroller to buy — while we’re both still very, very reserved and aren’t telling many people yet, we both have the longer view of looking ahead in case this works out like we both desperately want it to. We have both learned that life consists of a lot of taking care of the present moment while having the foresight to anticipate the future. It’s not always easy, but it behooves us to try.

Despite our efforts to hold our enthusiasm in check, please don’t ever take that as a feeling that we don’t want you to happen. We do, both, from the bottom of our hearts, hope that this is right, that you’re ok and will continue to be ok, and we will get to see you sometime in October or November. It’s just we’re scared and scarred from the last time and we are cautiously optimistic towards the success of this mission.

Here’s hoping everything continues to be smoother than we anticipate and quicker than we think.

This rant today is brought to you by this incredible news story. (Same story, different reports here, here, and here). A lesbian couple goes to the doctor, borrows some sperm, gets them fertilized in-vitro, and then has the embryos implanted to try to give them a child.

The procedure works. In fact, it works so well, the couple now has two healthy, baby girls. And they don’t want one of them, so they’re suing the doctor over it.

An Australian lesbian couple who underwent embryo implantation is currently suing Canberrian Dr. Sydney Robert Armellin for destroying the couple’s social life with children.  You hateful, terrible person — how dare you give this couple children when they went in for treatment?

Here’s some reasons why this couple of women should be taken out into the streets and hit over the head with a garden rake repeatedly for being selfish, ignorant, whiny, immature, disgusting human beings:

Reason #1: They don’t want one of the girls.

This is just awful. You underwent a procedure that has risks just like any other treatment, and not only did you get one healthy child, you got TWO! But, instead of being unbelievably happy and feeling blessed when so many other parents can’t even have one child, you turn around and sue them for giving you too many. I can’t imagine the thoughts that will go through the girls’ heads when they find out that one of them wasn’t wanted. Good job, Mum & Mum. That’ll be $3,000 in therapy to fix later, assholes.

Reason #2: They want almost A$400,000 in compensation for raising one of the girls.

I don’t know what the going rate for children is these days, but can you really quantify this and, if so, I think you’re spending far too much time worrying about money instead of raising your child. And they want this much money to help pay for a private, non-traditional Steiner school for the girl in question as well. So, not only do we want compensation, we want primo monies.

Did I mention that they make A$120,000 combined already? Yeah — does this greed make my butt look fat?

Reason #3: They want $15,000 to compensate for having to take time off work.

WAAAAH. Waaaaah. Do you want me to call the waaaambulance? You utter cretin. That’s part of the job of being a parent, taking care of your kids. I’m so glad that you feel like your time was wasted on your childrens’ well-being.

Reason #4: The women act as if their lives shouldn’t change by having children.

Quote: “She said the pair lost their lives functioning as a couple, becoming mired in everyday tasks associated with raising two children.” I’m sorry, but what did you expect to happen when you had kids, that you could go out every night, boozing it up with your airhead fag-hags, and crawling home at 3am to bump beavers until dawn? Did you not realize that having children involves being up to your elbows in poopy and saying, ‘hi, who are you?’ to your partner on a regular basis? How utterly shallow can a person be?

The one woman reports her partner as having “lost the capacity to love”. Fine. I’ve lost the capacity to avoid popping a cap in your ass. Twit.

Thankfully, the doctor’s lawyer sounds 300 times smarter than the plantiffs and has said that this is a pretty common occurrence experienced by most parents when they have children, and although they might feel unique, they’re not. I would have felt a lot better if she had said, “Suck it up, bitches.” Somehow, I think that was probably in her mind anyway.

To be honest, I’m a little surprised that the case has gotten this far in the Australian courts, as they usually tend to throw out this trite bullshit with judges laughing all the way, but I suppose they’re attempting to make a case based on the “medical malpractice” part of the entire episode, not the fact that the parents are complete and total flakes.

This just…astounds me, and it should make you shake your head, too. We’re going into the whole parenting game with as realistic viewpoint as we can, that it won’t be all smiles and giggles, but the benefits will far outweigh the trials and tribulations of the experience. To see other parents treating their children like mere commodities or inconveniences pains us to no end and we’d love to beat them senseless given the chance. In lieu of that, we’ll simply strive to love the dickens out of our children and raise them so they don’t turn into asshats like these jerks.

One of the suggestions I received was to write a bit about what I think in regard to Australian politics.

I am here to officially announce that I have no freaking clue.

But, in true Internet blogging fashion, I’ll happily open up my mouth and resemble the south end of a horse facing north in talking about something I have no knowledge of, if nothing else, to the amusement of my Australian compatriots.

I know that Australians once “lost” a prime minister by, supposedly, drowning, although it’s really hard to say given the country’s penchant for overly-poisonous animals that enjoy human a la stick.

I know that John Howard has mostly been a lapdog of the Bush administration and, despite most Australians I know thinking that Bush is nuttier than a squirrel pantry, the government still seems to back most things the US is doing in the world.

I know that they have a Labor party that does very little baby-squirting but has a lot of people involved with it that do things like dig rock out of caves in the ground. They also have a Liberal party which, contrary to popular belief, is actually conservative. Leave it up to Aussies to figure that one out.

I also know that Australian Parliament, much like the English equivalent, is a much more relaxed legislative body than any of the ones in the United States. Watching Congress on C-SPAN here in the U.S. is a great anti-insomnia therapy, but catching a session of Aussie or English Parliament is somewhat like watching a celebrity roast but using nice words. More than once has a news story come out about some politician or another calling another one a jackass or similar.

Or, as you can see in this clip on YouTube, a slip of the tongue may very well set back the entire legislative process while everyone quits rolling on the floor. Everyone in the world knows the Aussies are more relaxed than most, and this most definitely doesn’t depart from that notion.

I think that the Australian policy of compulsory voting is both wonderful and idiotic in the same glance. Living in a country where the “voting public” is usually a measly 35 to 40% of qualified individuals, its heartening to think that everyone in Oz is getting out and voicing their opinion.

However, requiring people to vote means you will end up with a vast majority of folks simply trying to “get it out of the way” and not giving a wet slap what they mark on the ballot, just as long as they get it done and nobody hauls them in for not doing so. This, I imagine, would mean that media exposure and making your name a household word works even better in Australia than in the U.S. — if you are looking at a ballot and you’ve heard of the one guy but not the other, who are you going to vote for? Not that this doesn’t happen in the U.S.; I fully expect McCain, Giuliani, Clinton, and Obama to receive a bunch of their votes simply due to exposure and not because of merit. But I’d imagine that there are a fair whack of people that simply don’t vote in the USA that, if they were forced to, would add to this pool, further diluting it.

Perhaps Aussies are just more astute.

I am trying to think if I know of any particular points of interest in Australian politics that I’d care to comment on, but when I’m still trying to figure out cultural differences (although I’ve come a long way), historical and cultural references (many of these still elude me), and attitudes, Australian Politics takes a pretty far back seat in the theatre of my mind (and is probably having a good time making out with Aussie Economics). That being said, even from my very limited exposure to anything, I have a few comments to make about things that Aussie politicians should perhaps concentrate on:

• Technology – Always a big one, and one close to my heart. Although Aussies have come a very, very long way in technology and in many ways have exceeded the US, it is something that politicians should keep at the forefront of their minds and their policies if they want Australia to continue to grow and expand in the world. Oz is a long freaking distance away from — well, most anything — but technology can and will close that gap and make it viable to conduct business from or to Australia without a huge expenditure. (plus, if it keeps expanding, I have job opportunities. yay!)
• Regulation - This comes on the heels of Technology and relates a lot to Australian telecoms (Hello, Telstra?) and similar businesses that, in the past, pretty much seemed to squelch any sort of competitive behavior. Not that the FCC or similar policymakers here in the US have done a perfect job, but on the whole we’ve recognized that a little correct regulation of monopolistic behaviors and corrections for the market promote expansion, competition, and innovation. There is a gigantic startup cost to almost any physical infrastructure in Australia, given the geography and population distribution, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that any one business has the right to disallow competitive behavior, especially when the economy could really use it. Plus, they’re going to have to start, like the US is, taking a look at VoIP and its impact on services in the country.
• Immigration – Actually, given the US’s procedure for immigration, the Australian equivalent is a walk in a park. I think the “points” system is brilliant. I just want politicians to keep this subject in their heads so it gets evaluated regularly and as many good, beneficial opportunities as possible are kept open for people willing to make the jump and live there.

Past these three things, I really can’t comment on other aspects. I’m not up on the Australian economy, I don’t know what civil rights are being debated, I’m unsure of the tax or social welfare issues at hand, and I haven’t kept up much on the national healthcare initiatives. I’m pretty sorely uneducated on most of it, as you can tell. If I move there, I’m going to be doing a LOT of reading and watching of news programs to catch up.

Anywho….this is my general, foot-in-mouth, completely unjustified look at Australian politics from the viewpoint of an almost complete outsider. If nothing else, if you are an American, I hope you learned something — if you are an Aussie, I hope you had a good laugh.

Vacations are strange beasts. They are essentially a means of escape for us humans, consumed daily with the tasks and pressures of modern, industrialized life, yearning to unplug and run away from everything, if only for a few fleeting moments. Taking holidays is the closest that mature adults come to running away from responsibility without actually doing so, all under the pretense of, “having a good time”, when “getting away from it all” is more the case than anything.

As such, coming back from an extended time away is always a bear, but it is even moreso when it involves a trip halfway across the world. I think I have mostly recovered from my jetlag and the spinning of brain as it tries to reorient itself on the world of the HereAndNow, so I can write this final chapter in our trip to Australia.

Brace yerself, Effie — she’s a long one.

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Australians love their beer, and I love my beer, so while I was in the land that loves its beer, I thought it prudent to make an appropriate review of some of the brands offered here. I am not, of course, a proper brew reviewer nor am I as up on my lingo as, say, my former roommate, Adam, so forgive me if I screw up something or sound like I’m just a guy that likes his beer cold and lots of it.

XXXX (pronounced ‘four eks’) is brewed in Queensland by Castlemaine Perkins. It is a clear-ish lager that has a bit of a bitter aftertaste to it and goes down relatively like flavored water. Unfortunately, the odd aftertaste to it leaves it wanting and it lacks any sort of body to it. I’ll drink it (as I did on the plane ride over) as it’s decidedly Aussie, but it’s not a favorite.

Victoria Bitter, most often known simply as “VB”, is, despite its name, a traditional lager brewed by Carlton & United Beverages, a subsidiary of Foster’s Group. It does have a more bitter (hoppy) flavor than other lagers, however, and a thicker body that makes it one of my preferred mass-produced Australian beers. It goes down well yet has that distinctive heaviness of a higher-gravity beer and taste that makes sure that you’re not drinking water. Overall, a pleasant experience for a big-name beer.

West End Draught is brewed in South Australia by Lion Nathan and is a pretty light lager that is served all over South Australia and is almost guaranteed to be on tap at any pub or establishment here. While popular amongst the locals, I’m less fond of it as it has some sort of odd off-flavor overtones in the palate during the drinking that somehow turns me off. However, it’s drinkable and is usually easy to obtain, so one makes do.

Following is a rundown of several beers that I sampled per bottle, as I could pick up each bottle for approximately A$2.50 or so instead of buying an entire six-pack or similar:

Steinlager: While not an Australian beer, I felt I couldn’t forsake one of the largest beers in New Zealand on a fair taste test. Sadly, however, the bottle was horribly skunked and my first impression was skewed because of that. Brewed in Montuek, South Island, NZ, this 5% lager ended up being very watery but had a nasty bite in the aftertaste. It gave more bite than a typical 3.2 American lager, but the finish wasn’t as smooth and I wasn’t very impressed.

James Boag’s Premium Lager: This 5% lager from The Esk River, Tasmania, was slightly skunked but not nearly as bad as the Steinlager, so that helped. It also had more body during the drink and less bite on the aftertaste, but had a sour finish to it, which may or may not have been part of the skunkification. Better than the Steinlager, but not by much.

Cooper’s Original Pale Ale: The 3.5% Original Pale from Coopers (Regency Park, South Australia) was a refreshing change from the previous beers as it wasn’t skunked and had a nice, crisp flavor. However, I felt that they took the “pale” in the title a bit too far and it lacked any sort of interesting aspects to the flavor, preferring rather to emulate a more watery existence. Swing, but a miss.

Cooper’s Mild Ale: Cooper’s Mild Ale was a better shot at a good ale, giving a more thorough shot at the body of the beer and providing a nice, even release on the aftertaste. This one I enjoyed quite a bit and took some time drinking it, so I think that gives it a good review right there.

Toohey’s New Draught: A popular beer here in Australia (brewed in New South Wales), left me with a less-than-impressive experience. The 4.6% lager had a very unique flavor, but not one I’d want to replicate anytime soon. It had a very nutty flavor with overtones of…fruit? I wasn’t entirely sure, but it was at least unique.

Carlton Draught: A pale 4.6% lager brewed by Carlton & United Beverages, was a very enjoyable experience. The brew was a bit carbonated for my liking, but the flavor was really well-thought-out and flowed nicely down my gullet with a thicker taste and nice finish. Something I’d definitely drink again.

Southwark Old Stout: Ah, the stouts, one of my favorite beer styles of all time — the darker, the better, and Southwark Old Stout, produced by Lion Nathan, didn’t fail to please me. Creamy and thick, it flowed down my throat in a lovely way, had a thick, happy head on it, and had great flavor from beginning to end. The bouquet was a bit lacking, but the flavor matrix was polished, so it didn’t bother me too much. A lovely beer, one that I’d be happy to crack open again and again.

Cooper’s Best Extra Stout: I was hoping that the name of Cooper’s Best Extra Stout might really blow me out of the water, given that it was supposed to be “Extra” something or other, but the extra must have been related to the level of carbonation and not the flavor. There was plenty of the former and the latter consisted of the typical, dark stout flavor but it tastes burnt, which is not the sort of experience you care to have. You want dark, smooth, creamy, malty, but burnt is right out, and this one fell short of making an impression on me, to be honest.

So, that’s the Aussie Beer Rundown. This was, by no means, exhaustive, but was a fun trip anyway. Australians certainly know their beers and moreover, really like to consume them, so you have to respect that, no matter what your tastes.